Delaware’s Oscar parties just got a little more exciting.
Wilmington native Zach Baylin earned his first Academy Award nomination Tuesday morning, landing the prestigious nod in the Best Original Screenplay category for “King Richard.”
The biographical drama, centered around the upbringing of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, earned a total of six nominations and is Baylin’s first credited screenplay in Hollywood.
The film is also nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Will Smith), Best Supporting Actress (Aunjanue Ellis), Best Film Editing and Best Original Song (“Be Alive,” Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and Dixson).
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Baylin, a 1997 Tatnall School graduate, can add the Oscar nomination to the others he’s racked up since being snubbed by the Golden Globes in December. Baylin picked up screenplay nominations from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Hollywood Critics Association, Writers Guild of America and more.
Baylin spoke with Delaware Online/The News Journal ahead of the film’s release in November, describing one of the pinch-me moments he had with the critically acclaimed film.
He was at the first full table read for the film at Warner Bros. studio offices in Burbank, surrounded by everyone from Will Smith to Toby Emmerich, chairman of Warner Bros. Pictures.
About 80 people were in the room as they read the script together from top to bottom, which he admitted was probably the first time he’s ever heard anyone read anything he’s written out loud.
At the end of the read-through, Smith led a big round of applause and told everyone that this movie was going to be big. And that’s when the enormity of the Oscars-bound project hit Baylin: “It was overwhelming.”
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If that was overwhelming, then his early morning Oscars nomination must have been exhilarating. Not that Baylin has too much time to soak in the moment ahead of the 94th Academy Awards on March 27.
His “King Richard” follow-up will be the script for “Creed III,” which is expected in theaters this Thanksgiving starring Michael B. Jordan, who will direct for the first time.
Baylin’s road to the red carpet started not only in the halls of Tatnall, but on its sports fields as well.
He played football for the school before heading to Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University where he was a film major and two-time Academic All-American wide receiver.
Originally from Wilmington’s Highlands neighborhood, he moved to New York after college to begin working his way into Hollywood with early credits including art production assistant on “Dave Chappelle’s Block Party” documentary and as a property master on the HBO series “Girls.”
It wasn’t until about eight years ago when Baylin’s professional writing career began when he sold an untitled TV series he wrote to TNT, which was produced by and set to star rapper/actor Common.
Even though the show, a conspiracy thriller set in the sports world, never made air, he was in the door after more than a year of work on the project, he told Delaware Online/The News Journal a few months back.
“Naively, I thought I’d write something straight out of school and sell a big script and I’d be off to the races,” said Baylin, who is married to Kate Susman and has two children, Mavis, 7, and Marlow, 6. “But then it took, you know, 15 years.”
The origins of “King Richard” date back the fall of 2017 when Baylin, a tennis fan, was meeting with a film producer when the U.S. Open came up in conversation.
The producer had been toying with a feature film on Richard Williams, father of the Williams sisters, but couldn’t find the right way into it. Baylin jumped in, wrote the script and it earned second place on The Black List in 2018, an annual survey in Hollywood of the most-liked feature film screenplays not yet produced.
Once Smith agreed to star, there was a bidding war for the film in 2019 and Warner Bros. won out.
“King Richard” will face stiff competition at the Acdemy Awards. Netflix’s “The Power of the Dog” led the field with 12 nods, followed by “Dune” with 10 and “West Side Story” and “Belfast” each receiving seven nominations.
Have a story idea? Contact Ryan Cormier of The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormierdelawareonline) and Twitter (@ryancormier).
